Faisal Shahzad has been charged in association with the Times Square bombing plot.

[Updated at 9:21 p.m.] Authorities in Pakistan have rounded up a number of people for questioning, as U.S. law enforcement sought Wednesday to piece together the actions and motivations of the Times Square car bombing suspect.

Iftikhar Mian, the father-in-law of suspect Faisal Shahzad, and Tauseef Ahmed, Shahzad's friend, were picked up in Karachi on Tuesday, two intelligence officials said.

[Updated at 8:47 p.m.] An official familiar with the investigation into accused Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad said Wednesday that Shahzad felt Islam was under attack.

- From CNN Homeland Security Correspondent Jeanne Meserve

[Updated at 5:19 p.m.] The suspect in last Saturday's botched bombing in Times Square was driven last July to a meeting with at least one senior Taliban leader in Pakistan by a man taken into custody Tuesday, a senior Pakistani official said Wednesday.

The official told CNN that Muhammed Rehan, who was detained Tuesday in Karachi, drove Faisal Shahzad on July 7 in a pickup truck to Peshawar.

At some point, they headed to the Waziristan region, where they met with one or more senior Taliban leaders, the official said. Rehan is believed to have links to the militant outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is close to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, the official said.

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Children's Tylenol recall: FDA slams factory conditions: A scathing report released Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration slammed conditions at the factory that produced the children's Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and other over-the-counter drugs that were recalled over the weekend.

No indication of long grudge, official says: Any grudge that accused Times Square plotter Faisal Shahzad may have held against the United States appears to have developed recently, according to a senior U.S. official who is familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly.

Cop: Lacrosse player killed after breakup: A University of Virginia lacrosse player charged with killing a member of the women's lacrosse team told investigators he had a violent fight with her, according to a search warrant affidavit released Tuesday.

Times Square suspect charged: The New York bombing suspect is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. CNN's Jeanne Meserve reports.

The Food and Drug Administration confirmed Wednesday that the bacteria found at the Johnson & Johnson plant that produced the recalled children's medicines was Burkholderia cepacia, a bacteria often resistant to common antibiotics.

An administration official on Wednesday credited a routine security screening carried out early this year with helping authorities to track down Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad.

When Shahzad returned to the United States from Pakistan in February, he qualified for secondary, or more detailed, screening under Customs and Border Protection criteria and was interviewed, the administration official told CNN.

[Updated at 5:53 p.m.] Authorities battled the Gulf of Mexico's massive oil spill with sweat, steel and fire Wednesday as patches of oil crept to within two miles of the Louisiana bayous.

Two specially equipped "burn rigs" set fire to patches of crude oil near the ruptured undersea well at the heart of the spill, a BP executive said Wednesday afternoon.

At the same time, a four-story containment vessel was loaded aboard a barge in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, en route to the well, the first step in an attempt to capture the leaking oil at an unprecedented depth.

And thousands of volunteers, wildlife officials, idled fishermen and National Guard troops mobilized to string floating booms along the beaches and across the mouths of estuaries leading toward the Gulf.

President Barack Obama signed a bill Wednesday significantly boosting federal support for disabled military veterans and their caregivers.

Among other things, the new law expands resources available for veterans' mental health counseling, provides expanded access to hospitals and clinics outside of the traditional Veterans Affairs system and provides stronger transportation and housing assistance for veterans living in rural areas.

Israel's prime minister and U.S. President Barack Obama's Mideast point man met Wednesday to discuss planned peace talks with the Palestinians, an Israeli government official said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. special envoy George Mitchell held a three-hour working session and plan to meet again Thursday, National Information Directorate head Nir Hefetz said. The two met one on one and with diplomats from the United States and Israel.

Almost two months after national elections, Iraq's two biggest Shiite blocs announced have announced their merger after weeks of negotiations.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition and the Iraqi National Alliance, a coalition of powerful Shiite parties backed by Iran, now have a bloc with 159 seats - just four seats away from the majority they'll need to form a cabinet.

Suspects on the government's Terror Watch List attempted to buy firearms or explosives 1,228 times in the past six years and won government approval in the vast majority of cases, according to a government report.

In 1,119 cases - 91 percent of all the requests - the government granted approval for the persons to proceed with the purchase, according to the General Accountability Office.

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